definitely that is bill in the senate 3637. and exactly right about now, they are debating that extension. our guest is a former adviser, economic adviser, to president clinton and senator barack obama, dr. robert shapiro, welcome. >> hi, rick. glad to be here. >> reporter: all right. dr. shapiro, it seems so ironic -- and i've used that word twice -- to listen to boehner worry about fate of generations down the road. at that particular point in time, this particular point in time, why does the senate want to guarantee a taxpayer expense, a program that is as large as $1.6 trillion? is there any reason you can think of? >> well, the only reason is that some banks think that if they have the guarantee, they'll get more of these deposits. the fact is, this is bad for the economy. it's bad for the banking system. there's a basic principle of deposit insurance. and that is you want to cover almost all depositors but not all deposits. and so you put a limit -- the limit has been $250,000. so the insurance coverage goes up to $250,00